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Social Nets Use Social Video To Sweeten Referral Traffic

It’s no secret why social leaders like Facebook and Twitter are investing so heavily in video: People love the stuff.

Also, as new research suggests, video puts viewers in a
more receptive state of mind, which bodes well for advertisers. As such, established video hubs like YouTube are sending far more engaged viewers to brand partners through referral traffic.

Among all social platforms, YouTube referrals have the lowest average bounce rate (43.19%), the highest pages per visit (2.99), and the longest visit duration (227.82 seconds), according
to content discovery and sharing startup Shareaholic.

People coming from YouTube are especially tuned in “because video itself is so engaging, and viewers are likely to maintain
a similar level of engagement with related content,” according to Danny Wong, marketing manager at Shareaholic. “Ultimately, [Facebook and Twitter] are smart businesses that realize the
opportunity (and potential) in fully engaging users,” he said on Monday.

For its findings, Shareaholic looked at six months worth of data -- from last September through February
-- across some 200,000 sites with a combined reach of about 250 million unique visitors.

Also of note, while Google+ and LinkedIn drive the fewest social referrals, they bring in some
of the best visitors, Wong and his team found.

On average, Google+ users spend more than three minutes with content shared by friends within their circles. During each visit, they
also visit 2.45 pages, and bounce about half (50.63%) of the time.

LinkedIn users spend about 2 minutes and 13 seconds on each clicked link, and then view 2.23 pages with each visit,
and bounce 51.28% of the time.

“Although many sites see minimal traffic from both Google+ and LinkedIn, now may be the time to invest in building communities within those
networks if engagement really matters to your business,” according to Wong.

By Shareaholic’s calculations, referrals from Twitter and Facebook are about the same in terms
of bounce rate, pages per visit and time on site.

Visitors from each sites bounce at about the same rate (56.35%), while Twitter outdoes Facebook with regard to pages per visit (2.15
vs 2.03). Facebook users, however, spend more time on a site post-click than Twitter users (127.44 seconds vs. 123.10).

Referrals from Pinterest bounce as often as those from Facebook
and Twitter, but rack up fewer page views per visit (1.71), and spend even less time on site (64.67 seconds).

Even worse are Reddit users, who average a 70.16% bounce rate. “For
marketers, Reddit is a tough nut to crack,” Wong admits. “Effectively, Reddit hates marketing.”